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Illuminating Our Human Experiences: Soliloquy from Hamlet
This lesson is meant to be conducted over a period of at least 3 class periods, which may or may not be consecutive. Teachers will introduce the soliloquy as a literary device and the themes of William …
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Like, Wow
The theme and motif of reality versus perception gallops—no, stampedes—through Hamlet. Nearly every character in the play has a problem figuring out what they know and how they know it. They cannot discern whether the things …
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Macbeth: A Three-Dimensional Approach
The purpose of "Macbeth: A Three Dimensional Approach" is to provide a framework for teaching Macbeth which reviews and builds on student prior knowledge from previous Shakespeare study and provides a cross-curricular …
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Measure for Measure: Illuminating the script
Students will learn to recognize, analyze, and synthesize the concept of ambiguity. Specifically, the students will extend and illuminate the text of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure 5.1, debating the ambiguity in …
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Shakespeare in Parts
In Shakespeare's theater, actors did not have access to a complete script of a play; instead, they learned their lines from manuscript parts that contained their lines and only a very brief cue. By staging moments from Shakespeare with cue sheets …
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Six Characters in Search of a Play
Students will associate voice and movement with character traits and develop an understanding of the character traits and motivations of the ‘rude mechanicals” as they develop a play for the Duke …
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You Can't Go Home Again (or, If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother)
Students will confront the central problem of this play: Hamlet's dilemmas. Focusing on Hamlet's reactions to the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother, students will study the text and grasp its subtleties by assuming the roles of …
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The Tempest: Picture Poems
Students will write descriptive poems of selected images of The Tempest using vocabulary from a word bank (a collection of Shakespearean words and phrases divided into useful descriptive categories.) This activity will …
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Dogberry: The Most Vigitant Lawman Ever
Dogberry and his companions provide gregarious humor in Much Ado About Nothing. By turning the watch into bumbling fools, Shakespeare pokes fun at the law.
The goal of this lesson is to help students interpret …
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Bill's Allusive Nature: An Introduction to Shakespeare
As teachers, we often begin a unit on Shakespeare by explaining why we put so much emphasis on a single author. I simply state that Shakespeare is everywhere. Many authors borrow Shakespeare's plots (A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, …
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"I am not well": Unspoken Endings and Unscripted scenes
Many of Shakespeare’s plays offer tantalizing tidbits of information that allude to scenes, moments, and responses that are not included within the specific text of the play. For example, in
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"Words, words, words"
The students will discuss words that represent the "big ideas" in Othello and that recur throughout the play. They will be assigned words to track throughout the text, recording which character says the word and in what context. (See …
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Lesson 13: How to Move the Crowd: The Persuasive, Powerful Rhetoric of Mark Antony
This lesson will allow students an opportunity to do a close reading of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony in 3.2. They will …
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Lesson 07: Editing the Conspiracy: Julius Caesar 2.1.94-252
With multiple characters to follow, students can easily lose track of the many details in this passage. Today, students will use close reading skills to edit this piece of text in various ways, requiring them to identify the most significant …
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Where Do They Stand?: Perspectives on Othello's Marriage
Act one, scene three is a good time for students to think critically about Othello because it places most of the major characters on the stage together for the first time. The threads of exposition initiated in
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The Secret life of Minor Characters
Students performing the major roles in a Shakespeare scene have lines to speak and business to do and are usually more content, even with more lines to memorize, than the silent or minor participants in a scene. Students playing soldiers, lords, and …
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"Picturing Shakespeare: Creating Illuminated Texts"
Students will analyze a Shakespearean sonnet of their choice by creating an "illuminated text" using Photostory or Garageband if using a …
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Performing Time, Status, and Genre in Romeo and Juliet
Having students perform in class doesn't need to take a lot of class time. These short scripts give students a chance to get on their feet quickly and act out cut scenes to illuminate issues of time, status and genre in Romeo and …
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Romeo and Juliet...Unfinished Business?
How do we know when our students are aware of the thoughts and motivations of the characters they read about? In this lesson, students will use their knowledge and analysis of the characters to produce a "cross-fire" show where characters …
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www.Macbeth
Students will use online resources in order to examine patterns of imagery in Macbeth. By comparing these patterns to those of other Shakespeare plays, the students will draw conclusions about the different reasons Shakespeare uses imagery …
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